A Stolen Heart (16 page)

“Why didn’t you tell him that it was Rhea?”

Alexandra cast her a look. “And have to explain what Mother was doing there? What could I say? Should I have had him meet Mother and realize that she is…” Alexandra sighed. “I didn’t want him to think that of Mother. I didn’t want to see the way he would look at her…at me. And then—when I realized what he thought of me—there was nothing on earth that would have convinced me to tell him what I was doing there. He is nothing to me, and there is no reason I should tell him anything.”

“Of course not, dear.”

“Don’t look at me in that sympathetic way. Perhaps my heart has been bruised a little, but I’ll get over it quickly enough.” Unexpected tears pricked her eyelids, but Alexandra blinked them away. “I think that I will settle my business here as quickly as possible. And then we should go back to Massachusetts. Let Thorpe have his precious Countess to himself. I have no interest in the woman.”

Alexandra sighed, then went on. “That’s not true. I like the Countess. She seemed to me to be someone I would enjoy knowing. I had wanted to go back to her and tell her about what you and I talked about this afternoon, only now he’s spoiled it. I can’t even talk to her without his claiming I’m shamming her.”

“What does it matter what he thinks?” Aunt Hortense asked. “As long as you know the truth.”

“It shouldn’t, I know, but…” Alexandra frowned. “Aunt Hortense, Mother said something to me this evening. I didn’t have a chance to tell you, but when I found her this evening, she looked at me and started to cry. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry, Simone.’”

“What?” Aunt Hortense gaped at her.

Alexandra nodded. “Just like the Countess did. It cannot be coincidence.”

“No. I suppose not,” Aunt Hortense agreed unhappily.

“Could Mother have known the woman? They were in Paris at the same time. Could it be that Father and this woman—”

“No! I don’t know.” Her aunt’s frown deepened. “I have an awful feeling about all this. I wish we had never come to London.”

“So do I.” Alexandra shrugged. “Well, we will be leaving soon.”

There was a pause, then she burst out, “Damn that man! I hate to run off and let him think that he scared me away. That I left because he had exposed my scheme and warned me away from the Countess!”

“I don’t know what you can do,” Aunt Hortense pointed out reasonably. “Unless you want to pretend to be the granddaughter in order to spite him.”

Alexandra made a face at her aunt. “No, of course not. I would never do that to the Countess. Poor woman.” She tilted her head, considering. “Though I might just go and see her before I leave, to say goodbye and wish her well.” Her dark eyes flashed. “And make
him
worry a little.”

A
LEXANDRA SPENT THE NEXT FEW
days working on her business affairs, trying to get all the loose ends tied up so that they could return to the United States. She had found that there was a ship sailing for Boston in a little over a week, and she was determined to be on it. All too often, however, her mind wandered from the subject at hand, and she found herself rehashing her bitter confrontation with Lord Thorpe or remembering the look in her mother’s eyes when she had called Alexandra Simone.

What had happened in Paris? Had her mother known Simone? Could she have rescued the baby, then adopted her? But if she had, why had she kept Alexandra’s origins secret all these years? Alexandra could see nothing shameful in taking in an orphaned child.

Alexandra wished intensely that she could get her mother to talk to her. But though she had gone into her mother’s bedroom several times, she had not managed to get the woman to say a word to her. Rhea had lain on her bed, sunk into silence, her eyes closed or staring off into space. Alexandra had seen her mother like this a few times before, and she did not understand it any more than she understood why Rhea secreted bottles of liquor about the house and drank from them furtively.

Three days after her confrontation with Lord Thorpe, she took a hackney to the office of her London agent, with whom her company had worked for years. Mr. Merriman greeted her with his usual politeness, but as they talked, Alexandra could see that there was something troubling him. Finally, he stopped in the middle of a discussion about a shipping contract, and said, “Miss Ward…”

He stopped and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Alexandra waited, and when he did not continue, she prompted, “Yes?”

“I—well, an odd thing happened two days ago. I don’t know what it means, but I feel it incumbent upon me to tell you.”

Alexandra stiffened. “Please do.”

“Mr. Jones came to visit me. Lyman Jones, the businessman for Lord Thorpe. I don’t know if you remember him—”

“Oh, yes, very well.” Alexandra’s face hardened. “Do go on.”

“He asked me a number of questions about you—how long I had been your agent and how much business I had done with you over the years, things like that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Well, I said I had done business with you for many years, and our exact dealings were none of his business. As if I would tell him the details of one of my client’s business transactions!” Merriman’s eyes lit with remembered indignation. “I told him he was a presumptuous upstart and sent him on his way. I also reminded him that we had a signed contract with Burchings Tea, and if he tried to weasel out of it now, I would have him in court faster than he could blink. He was all apologies, of course.” The agent looked a little smug. “Said he wasn’t interested in backing out of anything, but his client, Lord Thorpe, had told him to find out all he could about you and your company.”

“I am sure he did,” Alexandra replied grimly, wishing that she had Lord Thorpe before her right now so she could tell him exactly what she thought of him.

“Then you know about it?” he asked, relieved.

“I did not know that Lord Thorpe sent Mr. Jones to question you. However, I am aware that he has taken some rather peculiar notions into his head.”

“The oddest thing he asked was if I was sure that you were you.”

Alexandra ground her teeth. “That blackguard.”

“I told him that of course I had never met you personally before, but I had no reason to doubt that you were Alexandra Ward. Your credentials and letters of credit all were in order.” He frowned, and Alexandra could see the faint touch of uncertainty on his face.

“I am so sorry.” Alexandra was seething inside, but she forced herself to put on a pleasant face. “I can see that Mr. Jones’s questions have upset you. There is nothing to worry about, I assure you. As you said, my credentials are in order. I am most definitely Alexandra Ward. Lord Thorpe seems to have become somewhat…disturbed.”

Mr. Merriman’s mouth formed an
O
of amazement, and he leaned forward confidentially, saying, “You mean he’s touched in the upper works? I’ve heard some of those noblemen are mad as hatters.”

For one gleeful instant Alexandra was tempted to let loose the rumor that Thorpe was indeed mad, but she did not. She was far too sensitive to the charge of madness to put it on anyone, even someone she disliked as thoroughly as she did Lord Thorpe at the moment.

“No,” she said reluctantly. “He is not insane. He has an odd suspicion that I am an imposter.”

Her agent looked at her expectantly, and Alexandra knew that he would like a full explanation. However, she was not about to plunge into the long, confused and highly personal story.

“It is far too silly to give credence to,” she told the man. “I am sure you can tell that I am far too knowledgeable about every aspect of Ward Shipping to be anything but the woman you have dealt with in the past. As you mentioned, my company has done business with you for several years. I would certainly hate for this matter to end our business relationship.”

Merriman blanched at the thought of losing his lucrative share of the Ward business dealings. “No, Miss Ward, of course not. I have every confidence in you, of course. I trust that we will continue to do business for a good many years.”

“Good. Now, if you will excuse me, I should like to put off discussions of these other matters until another time. I think that I had better visit Lord Thorpe and put an end to this.”

She went first to Lyman Jones’s office, which was just down the street from Merriman’s, and rang a peal over his head that left him pale and shaken and babbling incoherent apologies. Next, she hailed a hackney to Thorpe’s house. Thorpe’s Indian servant opened the door, but before he could begin to speak, Alexandra sailed past him.

“No, Mr. Punwati, don’t even bother to lie that he is not here. I intend to see Lord Thorpe, even if I have to wait on the doorstep until he comes home.”

Punwati looked distressed at the thought. “Oh, no, Miss Ward, he is here. He is in his study. Let me—”

“Never mind.” Alexandra strode past him. “I know where it is.”

“Miss Ward!” He came after her agitatedly. “You must let me announce you.”

But at that moment Lord Thorpe himself walked out of the study, his face set in lines of aristocratic disdain. “Miss Ward. I thought I heard your dulcet tones.”

Alexandra ignored the skip her heart took when she saw him. She strode forward, letting her anger sweep through her. “How dare you? How dare you send Mr. Jones to my business agent and plant doubts in his mind about me?”

“I think I have a right to ask questions about someone with whom I am doing business.”

“You implied to him that I was not Alexandra Ward. You shook his faith in me and damaged our relationship.” Her dark eyes flashed, and her cheeks were high with color. She was aware of an intense desire to fly at him, claws out.

“If you are who you say you are, it should be no problem.”

“Please! Don’t pretend to be any more foolish than you are! We both know that confidence is at the basis of business dealings, especially when an ocean separates you. Since I am sure that an appeal to your human decency would fall on deaf ears, I will address your pocketbook. If I hear of your spreading another word of slander or innuendo about me, I will go straight to a solicitor. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good.” Alexandra whirled and started to walk away, then turned abruptly. Tears glimmered in her eyes. “And to think that I actually
liked
you! How could you turn out to be such a…such a snake?”

She left, Punwati scurrying to open the door for her. Lord Thorpe stood looking after her, his face bleak.

T
O
A
LEXANDRA’S SURPRISE
,
SHE
burst into tears in the hackney on the way home, and it took her a good two hours alone in her room to return to some semblance of normalcy. Finally, when she judged herself calm enough, she went down the hallway to her mother’s bedroom to see how she was doing.

Nancy drew Alexandra into the hallway. “If you could sit with her a spell, Miss Alexandra, I could get a bite to eat.” She glanced at Rhea’s sleeping form on the bed. “She shouldn’t be any trouble.” She touched the bandage on her head unconsciously.

“I know.” Rhea was never any trouble when she was sunk in one of her glooms, though Alexandra found them almost more painful to watch than some of her other odd starts.

“She’s just been holding on to that box,” Nancy went on, shaking her head. “And looking inside it and crying, all silent like.”

Alexandra nodded. “I will sit with her. Take your time.”

Nancy left, and Alexandra went into the room. She stood beside her mother’s bed and gazed down on her. Rhea was sleeping as peacefully as a baby, curled on her side. Alexandra’s gaze went to the box beside her on the bed.

She had always wondered what was in that box. Her thoughts went to the time when she was nine or ten years old and had tried to look inside it. Rhea had come into the room and seen her. Rhea had grabbed the box from her and started shrieking like a virago. For the first time Alexandra had seen a glimpse in her mother’s eyes of something mad, and it had frightened her to the very core of her being. She had never tried to get into the box again.

She looked at it, inches away from her mother’s grasp. The key lay on its ribbon on the bedspread beside it. Nancy had said Rhea had been opening it and looking inside. What was in there? What had her mother been hiding all these years? Alexandra looked at her mother. It would be a violation of her privacy, she knew, to look inside the box. Normally she would not have considered opening it.

But the past few days had been so strange, her mother’s actions so bizarre. Why did her mother refuse to answer her questions? Alexandra could not help but wonder if the secret to her past lay in that small box. She couldn’t imagine what could be inside it. It was too small to hold much. Perhaps a very small book, a diary—or the letters of a lover, the father of her child? Or—or what? Surely she had the right to know about her own life.

Stealthily, Alexandra walked to the other side of the bed. She stood over the box for a moment, then reached down cautiously, her eyes glancing to her mother, and closed her hand around the box. She raised it from the bed and pulled at the lid. It opened easily.